Let me begin my comment with some semantics of my own derived from our Japanese Guru Prof Tsuda- I will use three terms with following meanings- Accountability is towards outcomes: Responsibility is the actual conduct of work: Authority- is the right to change the work environment and layout.
In this framework top managers have accountability - not much responsibility and total authoirty. The shop floor worker has clear accountability, some responsibility and matching authority The middle manager has total accountability with very little responsibility or authority. He depends on the work of others for outcomes and can not change the rules of the game also. He is the fall guy if anything goes wrong!
No wonder the axe falls on the middle manager when anything goes wrong! The only way out is for role clarity by defining managing points for what one does and checking points for what others do. Role clarity is essential to avoid victimizaion of the middle manager He gets no boquets if things go well but all the brickbats in the event of failure.

His work is a scientific and systemic study of what managers really do and really contribute to the NHS. I think we are all familiar with the political rhetoric of "halving the number of managers in the NHS" to invest in front line staff. Anyone reading this might think it is just the move needed to remove the dumb, faceless blockage to work.

The facts are that it first depends how you count the numbers - a 2007 study from the NHS federation suggested that people in charge of staff (aka managers?) varied between 3 and 30% of the NHS.

Using a conventional definition of managers [3% of the NHS in 1999 4% in 2009) the big speeches on bureaucracy suggest a 50% reduction down to 2% which takes the NHS back to below the underfunded levels of the mid-1980's. Good material for the political soapbox and the newspapers but unproven as a sensible strategy.

In a knowledge industry the role of a middle manager is to clear the path for their expert workers. The key to this role is evaluating staff, decision making and pushing back/filtering diktats from above. Ultimately the outcome is the same - middle management are there to get the most out of scarce resources, it's just now the scarce resource is productive thinking time, not hours on the shop-floor. From my experience there is still lots of scope for scientific management (ala Taylorism) in most industries.

There's some great examples of how to do this right (in a software context at least) in the pragmatic programmers bookshelf - last one I read was ShipIt but I think there are newer more relevant titles.

It is startling how often consultants (at least big-name consultants) come up with simplistic ideas and force them onto every situation. Witness the view in Shumpeter's last paragraph.

In fact, management (management at any level) has three pieces:

The first is technical, elated to what the employees do. At minimum, that involves knowing enough about what your people do that you can write a performance review which has some relationship to reality. At the extreme is the manager who is the technical guru that the staff goes to when nobody can figure out how to deal with a problem. It doesn't matter whether you are the first level manager or Charles Schwab, you've got to know the business.

The second is administrative. That involves any and all interactions between the manager's people and the outside world: getting cooperation from other groups in the company (or outside), dealing with HR stuff (e.g. getting staff raises processed on time), passing along and interpreting directives from above, etc.

The third is leadership: developing an idea for what his staff ought to be doing, and then convincing them to do it. If anyone has figured out how to teach that as a general and reproduceable skill, they have not done a very good job of communication their world-changing (and it would be world-changing) discovery.

In a perfect world, a manager ought to be good at all three, of course. But the staff will cut you some slack on one area if you are very good in another. If you are a manager who is very good in two out of three, the staff will all be talking about what a great maanger you are. And if you are one of the rare people who is good at all three, staff will follow you from one company to another.

I've only ever seen one of the latter as a first level manager, and only a couple of times as a senior executive. That either says something about how we select and train managers, or about how hard the skills are to find, than about how important the three functions are.

I must say, however, that I once had the misfortune to work for a company with the kind of middle managers (at least in my chain of command) described by some of the commenters. (Perhaps I have just been very lucky?) But they made a real mess out of what otherwise was a pretty good division of a fine company. And things only got visibly better when most of them were gone; replaced by middle managers who were, if not great, at least no longer actively bad. Middle managers do make a difference.

The point that the demise of the middle manager correlates to the rise of the cult of the CEO is very interesting. I wrote on Knowledge@Wharton research about why middle managers matter. Middle managers turn “ideas” from the creative innovators into “projects” that can be completed and coordinate the work of others to get the job done. In mid to large organizations, the CEO - no matter the power of his cult - can coordinate that work or translate "ideas" into deliverable reality. (Knowledge@Wharton links and additional commentary available here: http://www.recognizethisblog.com/2011/06/why-middle-managers-matter/)

Yes the middle management is invariably at the receiving end of most drastic decisions of the 'management'. Despite the fact that they are the backbone & sounding board of most organizations.

Who else could be the communication link between lower levels & management & from top to the bottom levels.The middle level acts as a perfect filter to absorb & deciper what information requires to be passed on further.There is a 'skill set' here and cannot be ignored.You need not multiple layers of bureaucracy but a creative & informative middle level is a must for any structured organization.

The key to thriving in the cost effective information economy is to find unusual insights that enables the clients to stay ahead of the curve.
@ Nirvana-bound, I am in the consulting business. I believed I am not a con man or a charlatan. My function is to inform the clients on what is the current state of the Big Tangible Picture and to show them whether their current objectives connect to it. I show them where can they maximize their profits while minimizing their costs. If I have time, I will also provide intelligence on where to mitigate their risks. # It is not my fault if they are not working in peak efficiency. Unlike the other consultants, I actually have a process that delineates the strategic attributes behind the Big Tangible Picture (BTP). It also organizes the data within "a strategy as rules" approach. ... So what do you do?

Middle managers are but one casualty of the "new economy." With easy availability of most goods and the rise of do-it-yourself sites, many "gatekeepers" (people/organisations/institutions) who formerly controlled access without adding value are being squeezed out. Think travel agents, video rental stores and others. You can read more about this here: http://ow.ly/65Qvz

so best said: everybody speaks about leadership, thinking at the great historic leaders, and how they, the leaders, can remain embodied in the history of the organization and beyond, as unique leaders (actually, today wars are economic wars and the players are business leaders; hence, so many similarities between the market place and the battle field, hence legendary leadership figures, etc, etc.. more epical of course, better sold indeed) ... and management is hardly mentioned indeed as well...

I suppose, AndrewDP, that this blog is making the point that leadership is all very well in principle. But it's unlikely to be effective if would-be followers don't know who their leaders are. Minions know who their managers are, like them or loathe them.

In our organization we have very detailed, skilled, highly technical workers who handle very complex issues with clients and platform partners. They do very, very well at their jobs. The problem is that in doing this "in-depth work", it's impossible to keep an overview of client objectives / needs / et al, task & priorities and sequencing of projects. That's where our executive producers come in. They keep the overview squarely focused, and the technical producers keep the projects working.

The point is that organizations think that management = leadership, motivation, "I'm better than you because I'm higher in the org than you". The problem is actually a focused detail <=> overview perspective relationship. We still want to fit the "omnipotent lord" over all the "feudal serfs", as a result moving backward in organizational structuring. It's all about relative perspective of the same problem, and when the parts are properly it works like a dream.

The organisation that I work in is global, huge and very disjointed. Senior Management (divsional and geographic) spends most of its time restructuring internal functions, empire biulding and focusing on bogus performace measures. The rest of us ? Well we makie sure we actually deliver to the customer and make money for the shareholders !! I'm looking forward to a satire on Bullsh*t Bosses !

Provocative titles for publications like this one often recieve credence with little challenge. A little research into the authors assertions will also find previous percieved wisdom about some rather signficant UK banking business failures.

A key problem is that the UK is obsessed with "management" rather than leadership. The army has a useful phrase; there are no bad soldiers only good or bad officers. Focusing on leadership behaviours in an organisation helps promote proactive, positive and inspirational behaviour for people. Dare we mention the accountability word?

We ought to be challenging oursleves in business with some simple questions about "what is the right leadership approach to this problem?"... "how would I inspire others?"..."what would real leadership do in this situation?" A leadership approach helps overcome the many challenges we face in business and the economy and unfortunately this is a scarce resource.

Provocative titles for publications like this one often recieve credence with little challenge. A little research into the authors assertions will also find previous percieved wisdom about some rather signficant UK banking business failures.

A key problem is that the UK is obsessed with "management" rather than leadership. The army has a useful phrase; there are no bad soldiers only good or bad officers. Focusing on leadership behaviours in an organisation helps promote proactive, positive and inspirational behaviour for people. Dare we mention the accountability word?

We ought to be challenging oursleves in business with some simple questions about "what is the right leadership approach to this problem?"... "how would I inspire others?"..."what would real leadership do in this situation?" A leadership approach helps overcome the many challenges we face in business and the economy and unfortunately this is a scarce resource.

Using your reasoning the same company should be willing to pay up to 95% of it's profits to get great non-executive employees. You would make alot of people happy but I don't think the shareholders would go for it.

According to your statistic the executive pockets 58% of the profit they generate. In my view excessive. And confirms my suspicion that companies have become vehicles to enrich the executive rather than the shareholders.

And, as said in the article, my projects are directly under the board member with members being, almost, equal.

It works well but ONLY if people are responsible. Answering emails on holidays, weekends is a standard!

The feeling of ownership MUST be there otherwise, with no oversight, the work will just not happen!!

So I think this type of behavior is for certain people and certain organisations. Government and large corporates tend to have people that just look for approval from the person above, not the entrepreneurial and motivated staff...

@vectro; the only problem with this view is that there is no way of measuring your hypothesis accurately, in fact given the random nature of results looking at this issue on a global level, the evidence seems to suggest there is no direct link between executive pay and performance. There does seem to be link between excessive executive pay linked to company performance, and fraud however. Enron is one notable example.